Thanks, Mom, for fighting our family's toughest battle

I thought hard for weeks about what to get my mom this Mother's Day. Usually a phone call would make her very happy. But this year I wanted to do something more to tell that special woman in my life how much I appreciate her love and dedication.

In the end, I bought her a case of yellow wine. It is an inexpensive, sedative alcoholic beverage popular with Chinese working-class people and the elderly, who believe a small daily intake of the brew helps them overcome fatigue and fall asleep more easily - the two things my mother needs the most as she leads our ongoing family battle against hardship.

Our lives were plunged into chaos about six months ago when my father, 76, had a stroke on the day he and my mother came to visit us in Beijing. After undergoing sophisticated medical procedures at top hospitals in the city, he finally woke up and has since been struggling with the difficult journey of rehabilitation.